Gajah menyusur

Gajah parade attracts a lot of attention. Gajah-gajah are indigenous animals which were once used for transportation,war and beasts of burdens. As bumihaiwan, they eat local foods and need no importted stuff like the equine beasts which are imported and eat imported stuff.

If only Istana-istana use decorated gajah-gajah with howdah, mahouts dressed as hulubalang for ceremonial prowling duties within the perimeter and with regular guard duties at the main entrance, then the effect of saving the gajah-gajah from extinction and attracting tourists as well as generating some income to feed suppliers like wild banana stem and the like, would be more beneficial compared to the kuda-kuda presently used.

The last time I knew of gajah-gajah being used (rental RM 500 for 2 of the gajah denak) was around 1964 when the LLN were building pylons for their Peninsular grid. The gajah owner was a Malay from Kedah. Nowadays even when we have Kuala Gandah sanctuary and training centre, gajah parades invariably involve Siamese 'chang' and mahouts. [Notabene Changlon in Kedah means 'elephant stop', Keroh in Perak was named such because of the wallowing elephants in the small streams there and Vientienne (pronounced Vin-chang) in Laotian language means 'million elephant', in Melaka there is 'Gajah Berang' but the Batugajah in Perak has got nothing to do with gajah, but with the batu]

Gajah-gajah are also looked upon as pests by Felda and other commercial agricculturalists. Felda in the 1970's used electric fences to prevent gajah from 'intruding' into the plantations. Actually humans who intrude into the gajah habitat areas are pests from the gajah point of view.

In Besout Perak funds as much as RM 10 k was used in 1986 to catch and translocate each gajah to Belum. I remember one Exco member (who later joined S46) saying, why should the Jabatan Mergasatwa (Games Dept) spend money to transfer the gajah. Just shoot them and then import elephants from Srilanka for the Besout substitutes in Belum. How I wish that people like him be shot instead.

Titigajah and Gajahmati in Kedah of course have to do with gajah events/incidents.
The title of Lat's cartoon i.e. Gajah Menyusur has either got to do with elephant-path or is it a confused understanding of the architectural term especially used in the Eastern part of the Peninsula, i.e. Gajah-menyusu, something like a subhouse or smaller annex to the main building?